Living on love and fresh air - an experiment on fish

It looks more like a cross between a scientific experiment, curio box and erotic object 

It started from a cheap mechanical plastic toy, a fish eating a fish, I discovered at Vasai market.  It has a small fish in its mouth and flips its tail, opens and closes its mouth as if swallowing the small fish in its mouth.

If the small fish is removed from the mouth of the big fish, its motion of opening and closing of the mouth looks like it is gasping for air. This led to feeding it air and then to experiment of proverbial, survival on love and fresh air.  As the air pump, lotus, and doll’s head got added to it, the experiment gave away to other meanings.

Repaired Toofun Mail. Though it looks like the old Toofun Mail, everything is new and it runs without trouble . 

Channa at Juhu Beach

Channa at Juhu Beach 2011

Two eyes stare at each other. The electric bulbs flashes as a signal. 

Gold fish bowl, Plastic toys, electric bulbs, wire, electronic timer

Khoj, Delhi

An interactive piece that would respond to the sound in the room. The white sponge is the external ear, the eardrum the tawa, the bone that carry the sound to the inner ear became the hammer and rest of the inner ear, ropelight.

The hammer moves with a motor and hit the tawa and made a sharp sound. The any other noise nearby would make the hammer stop and the rope light to light up. As if the ear got angry to the intrusion of outside sound.

Vishal Rawlley came up with an electronic circuit which was sensitive to react to sound in the room. He also put an animation of Bappi Lahiri which responded to the sound at the same time with the ear.

video from the exhibition Guaranteed to Work 2

video link

video from the exhibition Guaranteed to Work

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pundole and guild april 2009

These objects are guaranteed to work. In a future world, new life forms evolve assembled out of the debris of civilization. These fragments are assembled together to make war machines that create a spectacle out of comic juxtapositions and movements; a computing machine bleeds its wires all over the floor as it generates answers; a city is made out of what used to be parts of its most base infrastructure and a garden is created that is both absurd and beautiful. Tiny fragments enlarge to become part of a larger whole through a shift of scale and vice versa. We recognize the pieces that make these machines only for a moment before the stability of signifier disappears into the assemblage.How long will these machines last or how long should they? Once their life is over do these also disappear into what remains of our history- waiting for another purpose, another meaning- an afterlife?

Edge of Nations (at Pundole)A miniature tank assembled out of a car jack, cycle wheels, etc rumbles across the floor. You can control its movement up to a point until a parallel set of controls begins to take over.

The Computing Machine (at Pundole)This machine can answer all the questions of the universe- except that all answers are randomly generated through a circuitry of movements and noises. The only answers possible are ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘cancel’.

The Garden (at Pundole)This is a garden made from the fragments of our everyday lives. In it is a longing for elsewhere. The other place is desire.

Infrared cannot be seen by naked eye (at The Guild)We walk into this city and join a lost car as it tries to navigate a maze like city of high rises and surveillance. A roving eye, a helicopter, a clock, a light house watches over us.

Light Tank (at The Guild)As a turntable makes its perpetual turns a tank spews out light in spectacular patterns that fill the room.

Rohan Shivkumar

installation view at Pundole

At Guild



Infrared Cannot Be Seen By Naked Eyes :It is the same work that I put up at Anant, Delhi. The installation changed a lot. Not only the space was different but too because many architect friends worked to put it up. Rohan Shivkumar, Rupali Gupte, Sonal Sundarajan (my colleagues) students from our college, Jinal Shah, Aparna Parekh, Maitri shah, Kunal Bhatia, Richa Mehta, Amya Gurkar and Ranjit Kandalgaonkar, artist. The show would not have happened without their help. This one was completely Rohan, Sonal, Jinal and Rupali’s display.

Light Tank: Ranjit sat and opened up around one hundred connections and soldered them. This was displayed once before at "Re-visioning Materiality", 19th December 2007 Gallery Espace, New Delhi.

Photographs: Prakash Rao

Girish Shahane wrote about the show at

http://girishshahane.blogspot.com/2009/04/kausik-and-kiran.html